ION…Positively Charged

Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself…

The 5 Elements of a Marketing Campaign that Changed our Game

Kris Chichak

It’s 1995. Monica Lewinsky is hired to work at Bill Clinton’s White House, a certain glove was deemed too small for the hand of O.J. Simpson, the popular tune Wonderwall is released, and the internet makes it’s way into public consciousness. Unless you’ve regrettably stumbled upon a campfire congregation screaming about how you’re going to be the one that saves them, none of these things really influence your current life; except of course, the internet. That little leap in 1995 changed everything.

In those days direct marketing really only consisted of direct mail. With mass adoption of the internet, email was starting to gain traction in the form of AOL and Prodigy, but it wouldn’t be until the next year that popular email services, like Hotmail, were created. Physical, printed mail pieces were the only way for businesses to convey a brand message to their faithful followers. Printing presses across the continent were roaring, happy to have a monopoly on the mass communications industry. ION, then called Dial Printing, was a standard offset job printer enjoying a steady demand for print products, but even then was ready to take on what the future had in store.

Today, the times have mostly changed. Wonderwall is still the go-to campfire jam for wanna-be “musicians”, and the Clintons are making an effort to move back into their old house (please behave, Bill). Businesses however, have changed drastically. Technology has created efficiencies in every industry, and direct marketing now includes mail, email, text, social media, landing pages and web. Staying true to our progressive nature, ION became a Canada Post Marketing Specialist in 2006, enabling us to send print marketing pieces directly from our facility to the target audience. In 2009, we adopted variable print presses allowing us to personalize each individual mailer. And now, in 2016, we have acquired an innovative new direct marketing software called EngageIT Xmedia. This software ties together our experience in print, love for design, and direct mail abilities with today’s most effective and proven marketing concepts: personalization, integration, and automation. Unlike O.J.’s glove, this is a perfect fit that enables us to take our customers direct marketing campaigns to the next level.

ION’s original offering:

Design – Creative design that is on brand, on strategy, and on target.

Print – Decades of print experience and state of the art technology needed to create fresh and innovative print products.

Direct Mail – An in-house mail service allowing us to send mail campaigns directly from our facility, cutting back on shipping costs, saving time and increasing efficiency.

With our old model, we were seeing two common problems with our clients campaigns:

Integration – Also referred to as multi-channel marketing, integration in marketing is the coordination of several marketing platforms to relay a single message. We knew if we were able to build integration directly into our direct mail campaigns, they would be far more effective and efficient.

Personalization – Variable print technology has a high capability for personalization of a message, but the degree of personalization is dependent on the customer information available. We needed a way to organize, segment, and build on customer data in order to take personalization to the next level.

EngageIT Xmedia solves those problems, by helping add the following to ION Direct Mail campaigns:

Strategy – We observe data segments, trends and information and create a detailed campaign strategy with measurable objectives and several target audiences.

Integration – Coordinating the delivery of the brand message through several channels (mail, email, sms, social media, web) to maximize the effectiveness of communications.

Automation – Campaign mapping software gives ION the ability to lay out each message of the campaign, and the platform that the message is delivered through. The campaign then runs itself based on triggers and data.

The result is a direct marketing campaign program that we call Chain Reaction Marketing Communications. It turns the complicated tasks of harnessing customer data to create a relevant message, and integrating multiple platforms to maximize the effect of the message, and streamlines all the processes into one efficient program through automation. Print and direct mail drive a powerful integrated campaign, that leaves our clients with valuable customer data and unparalleled marketing ROI.

So if “there are many things that you would like to say to your customers but you don’t know how” then ION Print Marketing Solutions is going to be the one that saves you. Sorry for the excessive Wonderwall references, I’ve been trying to get it out of my head since 1995.